The art of Arbit Blatas (1908-1999) is unique in 20th-century painting and sculpture. As the youngest member of
The School of Paris (LíÉcole de Paris), Blatas gleaned concepts of form, light and color from the greatest
French artists -- Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse and Utrillo -- as well as from his fellow Lithuanian émigrés,
Soutine, Lipchitz, Kikoïne and Kremegne. Having arrived in Paris in 1926 at age 18, Blatas became the
artistic historian of his mentors and friends. His thrilling gallery of portraits includes Picasso, Vlaminck,
Dérain, Chagall, Marquet, Maillol, Léger, van Dongen and Zadkine, in addition to those already mentioned.
But Blatas was no follower, and his art fits no mold. He transformed his inspiration into his own vivid artistic
world, and bequeathed us a prodigious canon of light, life and color in all media and genres: portraits,
landscapes, interiors, theatre and music, still lifes and Holocaust works, in painting, sculpture and lithography,
across the twentieth century.